


the rhythm of the heart

by vindicatedtruth (behindtintedglass)



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behindtintedglass/pseuds/vindicatedtruth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie teaches him more than the music, more than the songs.</p><p>He teaches Cook's heart to always beat for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the rhythm of the heart

It starts as a lesson, and soon evolves into a nightly ritual.

Archie has recently been teaching him how to play.  During the day, they’d sit side by side at the piano, with Archie gently guiding his hands and correcting his posture.

(“Cook,” Archie huffs in amusement when Cook deliberately leans into his touch, trapping Archie’s hands and forcing him to linger, “you’re being difficult on  _purpose_!”)

Archie begins by teaching him the different chords and breaking them down into arpeggios for him to learn the different notes. 

(“Let’s start with the major and minor first,” Cook laughs when Archie starts to be a little too enthusiastic, “I don’t think I can handle the diminished or augmented chords just yet.)

The lessons continue into the night… and this is Cook’s favourite part. 

Cook smiles into his pillow when he feels familiar, nimble fingers lightly tapping onto his clothed back.  Archie, for some unknown reason, has suddenly become fond of using the knobs of his spine as piano keys—and if it makes Cook shiver pleasantly as a result, both of them are careful not to point it out, lest the musical lessons evolve into…  _other_ equally pleasurable,  _physical_  lessons.

(It has, actually—more often than not.  Neither of them points it out, either, how Archie’s hands have become adept at playing Cook’s body and drawing the most beautiful sounds from Cook’s throat when he arches his back and loses himself in this piece that their bodies are continuously making together, because Cook doesn’t want this music to ever stop.)

Tonight, however, Cook is intent on answering the challenge Archie’s questing hands are posing. He is determined  _not_ to be distracted this time—no matter how much his body  _sings_  for Archie’s touch.

He stills as he concentrates on the rhythm Archie’s fingers are tapping; it’s quick and joyful, and the curve of Cook’s mouth widens when he recognises the song.

Archie’s fingers are reliving the happiness they both felt when they finally shared a stage for the first time in Manila, and Cook remembers listening to Archie play this song and sing it to an enthusiastic Filipino crowd while he was waiting for his own set. 

He remembers hearing from his vantage point backstage how the crowd sang joyously along, and how he had felt like his heart was so full to bursting when he heard how the happiness in Archie’s voice was magnified a thousand times by the love the audience was giving back to him.

He remembers how Archie told him, before coming onstage, that he was going to dedicate this song to  _him,_ that this is going to be  _their_ song for their time together in a country thousands of miles away _—_ for how Cook waited five months for Archie to be able to fly to Manila with  _him_.

And he remembers how his heart stuttered when Archie whispered the lyrics against his neck that memorable night when they came together for the first time in this home away from home:

‘ _Because you know I’d walk a thousand miles if I could just see you… tonight.”_

“Vanessa Carlton,” Cook declares softly now, “A Thousand Miles.”

He can feel Archie beaming from behind him.  “That’s correct!” his boyfriend says happily, and Cook’s shoulders shake in silent laughter as Archie sidles closer on their shared bed, tucking his bare feet against the curve of Cook’s knees as his hands settle on another song.

Cook’s eyebrows furrow in concentration as Archie’s fingers begin tapping a slower rhythm. It is melancholy and sad, and Cook swallows as he feels his heart seizing.  He recognises this song too—and thoroughly wishes he doesn’t.

He remembers the first time they got into a fight after Archie came back from his mission. Cook doesn’t even remember what they were fighting about, or what had started it; he only remembers how it had ended—and it did not end well at all.

He walked out of their apartment that time, needing to clear his head and quell the raging emotions still bubbling underneath his chest—two years worth of loneliness that were threatening to break through the surface and consume him, consume them  _both_.

He returned just before sunrise the next day, having nursed one too many bottles of beer to calm his erratic state of mind, fully expecting Archie to be asleep in bed by now.

Instead, he remembers hearing the most  _painful_  strain of notes from the piano as he entered their living room, making him stop in his tracks.  The music had no lyrics, but perhaps it was only fittingly so—no words in  _any_  language could possibly hope to capture the immense  _sorrow_ the music was emanating. 

Hearing it had pierced straight through Cook’s heart. 

He remembers how his feet had carried him to where Archie was sitting at the piano, and how he had wrapped his arms tightly around him from behind.  He remembers how his arms had suddenly felt wet and cold as it caught the teardrops falling from Archie’s eyes, and he had buried his forehead against Archie’s nape in silent apology as Archie’s shoulders trembled from holding back his sobs.

 _‘I thought,’_  Archie had whispered sorrowfully then,  _‘you already left me.’_

And he remembers how he had crushed the boy against his arms, whispering fiercely:

‘ _Never.’_

He reaches behind him now, capturing one of Archie’s hands, and he smiles sadly when he feels it shaking beneath his.  He brings it to his lips, nuzzling those cherished digits contritely as he murmurs:

“Ludwig van Beethoven. Moonlight Sonata.  First movement.”

Archie stills behind him, and he feels a warm gust of breath against his nape as Archie says softly, “That’s correct.”  The fingers by his mouth caress his lips lovingly, wordlessly acknowledging the forgiveness both of them needed from each other, before Archie gently retracts his hand and proceeds to the next song.

Cook lets his legs tangle with Archie’s, rubbing his boyfriend’s ankles comfortingly with his toes as Archie begins tapping on his spine again—and Cook is so distracted by the feel of Archie’s body being so pliant and warm against his that he almost fails to recognise the song. 

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathes when he suddenly gets it, and he can’t keep himself from smiling wistfully at the memory.   

He remembers how he had been the one adamant to walk away from…  _this_ , what he and Archie had—what they  _have_ —even though at the time, neither of them never really acknowledged what it was  _exactly_ that they were trying to let go of. He had been willing to let Archie go—to let  _this_  go—because while it was  _killing_ him to do this, he also could never forgive himself if he was the one holding Archie back.

Which is why it had surprised him back then how it was  _Archie_ —who was the one leaving, after all—who was determined to hold on.

He remembers how he was resolutely not looking at Archie even as he was helping him pack, even as he felt Archie watching him the entire time.

He didn’t think he could look Archie in the eye without begging him to stay.

He remembers how Archie had paused while he was wheeling the last of his baggages out the door. Cook was rigidly facing away from him when Archie had spoken softly.

‘ _When I get to Manila… every song I sing will be for you.’_

Cook had swallowed against the sting of tears making his vision blur, and he angrily blinked them back.   ‘ _I’ll remember that_ ,’ he had managed to say neutrally.

He had thought in the silence that followed that Archie had already left.  Just as he was about to finally let himself break down, Archie had spoken one last time.

‘ _And if you still feel the same a year from now… if you can still hold on and wait for me… please listen to the song I will sing for you then.’_

Cook’s eyes had widened then, and by the time he had spun around, about to ask what exactly Archie had meant by that, the door had already closed.

Archie was gone.

And it was a year later, on the first anniversary of Archie’s departure, when Cook was just about ready to permanently run away from it all, that Archie had finally let him hear  _this_ song—as if in answer to the despair of his heart, as if Archie had known exactly what Cook needed from him despite being thousands of miles away.

 _‘I can see you hurting.  Turn around—I will be right there.’_  

“Don’t Run Away,” Cook says now, and he grins as he can’t help but teasingly add, “by the one and only David James Archuleta-Cook.”

He has already expected the playful slap Archie swats against his shoulder, making him laugh out loud.  “What makes you think I’m going to take on your last name, Mr. Cook?” Archie grouses from behind him.

Cook stiffens as his stomach does a quick little somersault, suddenly unsure of what Archie means by that, until he hears Archie let out a long-suffering sigh from behind him. He feels the breath knocked out of him as Archie suddenly wraps his arms around his stomach and  _squeezes_.

Archie throws a leg over Cook’s hip as he presses close.  “What if… I want  _you_ to take on  _my_ last name, hmm?” Archie murmurs by his ear with an impish little nip at his earlobe.

Cook shivers, and when he speaks, his voice is now lower, rougher.  “Wow, okay, I am  _definitely_  liking this possessive side of you, Mr. Archuleta.” He finally turns around to face his boyfriend, and he arches an eyebrow at the way Archie is smirking at him.  “We’ll take that into consideration,” Cook says lowly as he cups that beloved face between his hands.  “I kind of want to let the world know you’re  _mine_.”

“Idiot,” Archie says affectionately as he tugs on Cook’s collar.  “I have  _always_ been yours,” he murmurs against Cook’s mouth. 

Both of them moan softly as they melt into the kiss, Cook’s low groan and Archie’s high-pitched whimper melding into the sweetest harmony they have ever made together.

“Is the music lesson over now?” Cook asks breathlessly as he forces himself to break away from that delicious mouth momentarily.  “I kind of want to move on to another kind of lesson—one I know we’ll  _both_ enjoy.”

Archie laughs at him instead.  “You’re insatiable.  And impatient.”  Archie’s eyes are twinkling merrily as he compromises, “One last song, then.”

And this time, Archie splays his fingers over Cook’s chest.   

Cook holds his breath silently, knowing how Archie is telling him without words that this song—played over Cook’s heart—is the most important of all.

And with the first few taps of Archie’s fingers, Cook easily recognises the rhythm—and he squeezes his eyes shut at the overwhelming  _love_ that suddenly suffuses his entire body, his entire  _soul._

He knows this song. He knows it so much by heart—because it is  _his_.

He rolls over on top of Archie and kisses him deeply, soundly, telling him without words that he knows, he acknowledges, he  _understands—_ and most of all, he  _promises the same._

_‘When all you know seems so far away, and everything is temporary… rest your head.’_

“Permanent,” he vows against Archie’s lips. “What we have… is  _permanent._ ”

 


End file.
